A Day's Walk From Anywhere
by Ghilanna Faen Tlabbar
Summary: A young bard writes of her stay in a sentient town. Oneshot.


**Author's Note: **Plotdale was created during a particularly slow session of D&D last summer. Only now has it blossomed into this. I hope you enjoy it.

**A Day's Walk From Anywhere**

_28 Ches 1371_

_Year of the Unstrung Harp_

It does exist.

The few books in Candlekeep that even dealt with the subject treated it as a joke; how could there be such thing as a sentient town? What they seem to forget is that our world is one of things that, by all rights, should not exist. Men with octopi instead of faces, ships that fly, gods that change with the seasons…why shouldn't it exist?

Should I die at the hands of some awful Thing—and it will be due to my own stupidity if I do, it would be suicide to wander away from the protection of our clerics—I want whoever stumbles across the ruins of this record to be able to find it. More importantly, I want them to _know _it. One can pass through it and not know where they've been. You have to pay attention, otherwise, it's gone.

Strictly speaking, the town is nameless. The Candlekeep sages named it, with all the condescending wit of sages asked to study a volume of children's' stories. In all the literature about it, the town is called Plotdale, or simply the Dale (not to be confused with the Great Dale, of course). No one's really quite sure why. It may be that it bears a strong resemblance to all the legends about tidy little towns with nasty secrets. The townsfolk seem to have adopted the name, though. One of the clerics of Oghma explained it thus: "Everyone passes through Plotdale once in their life. That's usually the turning point of their story." I thought that was very clever.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The trouble with finding Plotdale is that it's not on any map. You actually have to know where you're going. One might ask, "Well, how do you know where you're going if it's not on any map?" It's easier than it sounds, really; the Dale is a day's walk from anywhere.

"In what direction?" One might ask.

I am not one to scold anyone for overthinking. Thinking is an intrinsic part of my calling, after all. In this instance, though, simple questions constitute such a gross amount of excessive worry that the asker ought to be smacked and made to sit in a corner until they know better. If you're unsure of your steps, you'll never reach it. You mustn't set out for the path that you _think _leads to Plotdale. You must _know_ it leads there. One can spend their whole life looking for it and never find it, even though they might have walked past its boundaries three times a day.

There is no sign. No walls surround the town. The Dale does not give itself away easily; its farms and fields look much the same as others you might find in Faerun. But if you have been following my instructions, you will begin to see it. The sky may seem bluer. Fields will be a little less tidy. Here and there, small eyes will peer out through the crooked rows of plants, or you may hear the tiny crackle of a shocker lizard hunting bugs (they live above ground here, it's the strangest thing).

If you ever make it to the high street—doubt yourself among the farms and you'll find yourself back in your local countryside, the shocks changed to the hum of dragonflies—you'll know where you are. Everything's just a shade "off", as Rinn described it. Nothing is particularly different from any other small town—on a conscious level, at least. There's a subconscious hum, as it were, so strong that even our blind drow was able to make the above comment.

Its inhabitants say that it's the Dale talking in its sleep. Scoff all you like, but I have no reason to disbelieve it. The legends, after all, say that the town is alive.

"The Dale provides" is a common saying within the town. There is an eerie basis of literality to it; our Inkeep has told us about the sudden appearance of buildings on a street already filled to bursting, yet it fits perfectly and the street seems no longer that it was before. A spinner needs more wool and a sheep appears in the square, dumbfounded by the change in its surroundings. And for us, the wanderers, well…a mine opens up nearby and spews forth elementals, or shadows haunt an ancient building that wasn't there yesterday. There's always just enough gold, jewels, and maybe a fancy weapon or two.

No artifacts, though—"One of a kind is one of a kind", as the Inkeep said. And no humanoids, either. From what they tell me, anything else is fair game.

At any given time, Plotdale hosts about five thousand humanoids and an indefinite number of other little beasties. The people, as the Inkeep said, are not the town's creation. They're all people like us, wanderers, who come through and decide that a town just slightly out of alignment with the rest of reality can accept them when no one else will…

I seem to be the only one concerned enough about this to make any sort of note, though. From my perch on a bench by the fire, I can see that Varos has gone and gotten drunk again. May Rinn have enough judgment to stay far out of his reach tonight.

Plotdale provides, after all.

_-Journal entry of Serafina Brightbow _nee _Karanok, a Chessentan bard_


End file.
